Encyclopedia of Philosophy: MORE'S UTOPIA

Pomponazzi's book, swiftly condemned, did not have a great influence; but in the same year there appeared a much more popular work: Utopia. This was written by Thomas More, a London barrister in his thirties who had just entered the royal service under King Henry VIII. More was a keen humanist, anxious to promote the study of Greek and Latin literature in England, and a close friend of Desiderius Erasmus, the great Dutch scholar who was just then working on a scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament. Utopia, written in Latin, was a lively description of a fictional commonwealth, addressed to an audience which was agog for news of overseas discoveries.